Remission
by UnnamedElement
Summary: Legolas & Gimli go to the sea, for an interesting reason... "For the Sea is like a drug. It is a thing that must be sated, yet it has no real treatment. It can steal all from me, drain me—and drain those who love me—until there is nothing left but the shell of an elf..."


**Author's note:** Written for the September Teitho challenge "Senses," and a bit more rambling and less...tidy than I normally write! Thanks to CheekyBeak for reading through this for me. "Remission" is a companion piece to Chapter 4 of "Midden," the one-shot "Idiot Swallows & Impatient Dwarves," and very important to the WIP "At Sea in the Middle of Ithilien."

* * *

 **Spring, Year 5, Fourth Age**

 **Ithilien and Belfalas**

I have lived long enough to have lost parts of me and gotten them back. Dozens of times—hundreds—and I have overflowed with life and then been drained empty too many times to count.

There have been times I thought I lost all of me.

I remember a burst of sunlight through the trees the first day I forgot how to hear. I remember a crash the day I forgot how to see, and the pain of an arrow the day I forgot how to taste—the taste of vomit in my mouth the day I could not feel the rain on my skin nor the rock underfoot, and the first day I forgot how to smell the rest of me was overwhelmed with smoke from head to toe—I burned, inside and out.

But that is not as bad as it seems.

The worst was the day the world fell from under my feet and I drifted in an uncomfortable darkness, a tunnel of thoughtless grey that my mind could not outwit. There was nothing in my chest but cold air, frozen in place—I felt nothing but the rise and fall of my own chest, as if from a hundred leagues away, like the memory of pinching one's hand after it has fallen asleep—I barely moved. I was on the other side of cracked ice; I drowned.

That, I think, is like being drugged.

(Or bitten by a spider—which happens occasionally in Mirkwood—so that one's whole body becomes nothing but a sack of limbs—limp and unresponsive—and one must hope their peers are near enough and kind enough to correct their own foolishness.)

Every time I am overwhelmed, I plummet wholly into that greyness—I see the world through that fog, and I hear it through water.

That is how it was last week. Last month? When the moon was near full at least, last, that was when I was at the Sea.

Gimli stole me from Ithilien at my friends' request to, I guess, have me 'improve.' We had been discussing it for months, Aragorn and Gimli and I, the three of us—whether or not I should go back to Pelargir, or venture closer even than that, in an attempt to ease the bouts of wildness—and weeks of listlessness—that come upon me now with the seasons.

Nothing else was working.

It _had_ been my suggestion, of course, though they at first balked at it, like it was some dangerous wood-elf fancy. Gimli cuffed me on the head then, and Aragorn halted the conversation, and then very near immediately tattled to Arwen and to my lover. But, at our next conversation, I presented Aragorn with a hard-won letter of support from Ithilien, and Arwen sat at Aragorn's side with her hand on his thigh and her midnight hair trailing the table in a distracing way to which I know Aragorn is utterly powerless...

And so, against two elves, Gimli stood no chance.

And that is how I ended up at the Sea alone with him.

It all makes me feel mad.

I cannot remember sometimes what I have seen, where I have been, what I have _felt_ when I return home. (But if there is scratch or injury, or I have acquired some new _thing_ , I can look at what has happened or what that thing is and sometimes remember, even though I have been moving so fast that my very self feels blurred with the world in a palette of earth tones).

But I lose whole _senses_ in my memory for periods of time. I see everything as if it is described to me when thinking back, but I cannot feel it; I cannot explore around in the memory to make it more real.

I was alone at the Sea with Gimli when the moon was near full. But I do not remember getting there...

I do not remember anything at _all_ , in fact, until we had made a fire in its dunes, and Gimli was pressing a mug of tea into my hands, and I felt the sting of sand on my bare arms and wondered where I had put my cloak.

I asked Gimli then if he had drugged me on the way.

He said he had not.

He explained that we rode Arod and that I led the entire way, and that I would not let us sleep until we arrived, and that I was _delusional,_ _Master Elf! And how did you think you would feel after two days without rest? Even elves are not indefatigable, and_ had I even thought of him? And what _are you doing with your hands?!_ _Hold the tea, you fool, and drink it, and lay down before—_

So I drank it, but I did not lay down.

I leapt up and ran from the fire to the waves. The moon was high, the tide was low, and the water was like cold fire on my feet. The wind bit at my ears and made my head ring as I waded out; the lightning on the horizon was so far away it was like fireflies weighed down in dewy grass, at the Wood's edge, far far back in childhood. I tasted the salt through every part of me. As I took a deep breath and felt it scratch down my throat, I screamed out there—standing in the Sea—I screamed in relief.

And then Gimli had latched his arms around my waist and was pulling me out—something died in my throat as if punched as he tugged—and I did not fight him at all. I followed him to shore.

All of me felt a million feet beyond myself, and I remember tilting my head back to the stars and collapsing onto a cloak and asking Gimli if he remembered that drinking song Sam had ashamedly taught us the last time he visited. I felt its notes rambling inside my chest like wild, climbing honeysuckle, suffocating and cloying and crawling so fast the flowers could not bloom for the leaves that swelled and the vines that reached and reached and _reached_.

I remember looking at Gimli as I asked, and asked some more. He sat crosslegged beside me, heavy and leaning. He was sideways in my vision, and he was shaking his head. His dark eyes were so dark in the night, and clouds moved in from the West and came for us, so fast—so fast!—and then there was too much air in my lungs, and I could not think. Gimli's hands were on my wrists, and he was humming something that was _not_ Sam's drinking song, and I was even farther away—so far—until I could not hear Gimli, or anything at all.

And, after a moment, I could not see the clouds coming for us.

And, next, I could not smell the salt, nor, suddenly, could I taste it on the wind.

But I _could_ still feel Gimli's hands on my wrists, holding me flat on my cloak; I could feel his hands gently reassuring and patting at my hair—the wind was trying to sweep me away—and then everything released.

I was dark all over—a tunnel of grey, on and on til morning.

I asked him the next day if he had drugged me _that_ time, and _that_ time he said 'yes.' He was afraid with no rest I would not be able to control myself upon first touching the Sea, for apparently Aragorn had confided in him that worry. My friends had _also_ warned him that I will sometimes follow the wind to the very edges of the world—until I am but a centimeter between this life and the next—but I told Gimli that was a bit overstated...

Still, I was not angry with him for drugging me then, and still I am not. I understood, and understand.

That next day, though, I was broken. It was like the opposite of being burned.

Burned by fire, you feel everything so intensely until you _cannot_ feel it anymore; you _smell_ it until you cannot breathe; you _taste_ it until you cannot, and then everything is simply _gone_ if you do not get out. And, if you do, everything is _gone_ until you come back to things, and then you taste it and you smell it for _days_. When you burn, though, with a fever—from the inside—even a feather will set you aflame, a breath of cool air is agony, a lover's gentle song sets your head to bursting…

But what I was then—at the Sea—was neither of those: I was empty.

The opposite.

I _saw_ , but there was no depth. I _heard_ , but there was no harmony. I _tasted_ but it was muted, as if I my tongue were burned, and the sun on my skin felt like I had been cold for a hundred winters and would never know its warmth again, like touching metal left outside overnight even as it shone in the morning sun.

I walked into the water that morning with Gimli at my shoulder, and I was rocked by the waves until I thought I would be sick, but I did not get out. Gimli stood beside me with arms crossed and knees bent so he would not be knocked over in the surf. For _hours_ he stood there, and I stood—swaying—in silence. Gulls flew by, fish jumped from the water as if chased by something larger, and I stood and felt sicker and _sicker_ , until I could feel nothing but the sickness in my stomach and my arms crossed over it—I could not even hear the gulls above.

It was not until a very large bird flew before us and sprayed a dozen tiny minnows from its mouth that I came back to myself, and then the water was blue and green and brown and deep, and the waves were whitecapped, and the sun was past noon and hot on my back, and my ears stung inside and out from the wind, and I tasted the Sea on my lips, in the hair that whipped across my face—crusted in salt and crunching—and I felt so sick, so very sick, and it was all _so_ loud.

I was so overwhelmed by it—I felt it all starkly.

I came back into my own body in that moment, and every part of me exploded. It was like I had awoken from an injury, or my whole self was stirred into a frenzy by a lover's touch—I burst into life as if born again, blinking and new in the ocean, like all songs are born.

I fought my way, then, out of the water, which had risen around us as I stood there that afternoon like a bag of stiff limbs or a Gondorian statue (but mostly, I guess, as if dead). I felt the water swirl around me and suck down to fill the space, to tug at the determined muscles of my legs when I turned my back on its horizon—the sea wanted me there, but it could no longer have me.

Shells stuck between my toes as I climbed out of the surf.

The Sea foamed at my ankles.

A bird shat on the sand beside me as I ran further still—to dryer ground—and I fell too heavily to my knees.

I leaned forward onto all fours and I was sick, sick for the first time in years. I felt like I was vomiting for days (but it was not so long, I know, because when I finished Gimli was at my side with a cloak and a waterskin, and the sun had not moved)—the salt scraped me from the inside as I heaved, and it burned me again.

I eventually wiped a hand across my mouth and turned round so I sat on my backside, facing the ocean.

I tasted like fish and I smelled like the Sea, and when I looked down my toes were red from the coarse sand—their oil sucked out by the water, they were like raisins. It was so bright that everything seemed whiter than it should be, but I could tell, at least, the color things were supposed to be—I could remember what things looked like, and that was better.

I had been wet for so long—my shaking fingers were darker than I remembered—and I was cold.

Gimli was not, though, and he draped the cloak about my shoulders and pressed the waterskin against my chest until I looked at him—his cheeks above his beard were pink from the sun and the wind—and I took the waterskin in my hands; they were cold and numb, dumb and slow… Gimli grasped my shoulders and squeezed them hard until I shifted, and finally I looked away.

He tapped my cheek, and I drank the water. I dropped it into my lap. He tapped my cheek again. I lifted it, and drank. And it continued this way until the water was gone.

I fell asleep watching the tide come in, with my knees tucked up in front of me, head wedged between them and tilted up the shore.

When I came back to myself _that_ time, the sun was setting and the world was rich.

Gimli pulled me back to our camp and scooped food onto plates, and I opened my eyes to him, and I smiled. I felt like I had when I still had a home, when the world would go to sleep every winter and I would search the wood for stripped beech leaves every spring, eager to find the skeleton of the place, to see what held us all together—what we looked like stripped down, when we had weathered the worst and come still back to life. . .

We ate and we rested and the next morning we packed camp without a word. We rode back toward Ithilien, and my heart was real again. I rejoiced to see the land turn greener and golden with its new flowers as we rode inland to Lebennin, and I remember Gimli laughing at my back—he shakes my whole body when he laughs so heartily behind me, and I can feel the deep bass of it in my chest, like thunder.

I was singing by the time we were home, and I was inside myself—neither burning nor freezing, not dead, not bursting, but _being_ —and I did not feel sick.

My friends rejoiced in their quiet way—and my lover swept me away in his not so quiet one—and Ithilien felt _right_ and the world was abuzz, and I was wrapped in it.

So, in the end, it was not so bad, what happened at the Sea.

And I will gladly do it again.

For the Sea is like a drug. It is a thing that must be sated, yet it has no real treatment. It can steal all from me, drain me—and drain those who love me—until there is nothing left but the shell of an elf—a bag of limbs, a feverbrain, days and days on end of not knowing who and where I am, until I come back to the trees and to my friends—to my love and to my almost-home—and they remind me.

I do not trust many as much as I trust Gimli.

At the Sea's edge, I will let him break me again, like I will let no one else.

I will heave it up and out of me every few months. I will lose myself to the greyness of it if it will bring me back, so that I feel joy like once I did: smell the fresh roots pushing up after winter, a hint of wet soil, before even I can see them. I want the sun to warm me not just on my skin but from the inside, too, because I will be so pleased to simply see it when I open my eyes…

The Sea is all of me, and all of my senses. It steals them away and gives them back, over and over and over again.

But I will master it. I will take it into me until I understand it, until it wins one day when I am waist-deep or throat-deep or overwhelmed in its waters—

But, until then, I am burning through life: a hundred fires directed outward, a thousand rainstorms directed inward, a million moments I will make heavy so my feet are on the ground—ready even with rocks in my pockets when the storms come—and I am held down, and here.

I will not spend my life squinting forever through greyness.

I live in Ithilien; my friends are the leaders of great lands; I am well-loved and well-led; and the Sea has been stirred in me, but it has not taken me.

I see it; I smell it; I feel it—I _know_ it.

And I will _not_ let it take me yet.


End file.
